Abstract
Contemporary discourse has identified several urgent priorities concerning police training and education, including: (a) empirically testing and validating the effectiveness of current programming in reducing lethal force decision-making errors; (b) integrating evidence-based content and pedagogical approaches into police curriculum; and (c) understanding the breadth and length of programming necessary to ensure learning and transfer of skills to operational field settings. Widespread calls to identify effective and actionable training programs have been met with numerous research studies, systematic reviews, and policy recommendations that reveal the need to train officers’ internal physiological awareness, which is foundational in shaping cognitive decision-making, emotion regulation, and behavior under stressful conditions. Several investigations have shown improvements to both lethal force errors and physiological recovery following a multi-day autonomic modulation (AM) intervention. Immediate and sustained training gains are observed following repeated practice with clinically validated protocols integrated into training scenarios. Despite evidence-based support for AM in addressing the aforementioned priorities, police organizations are faced with limited time and funding for training and education. The goal of the current quasi-random pragmatic controlled trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of a modified 1-day version of an established AM intervention. A sample of active-duty police officers were quasi-randomly assigned to an AM intervention (n = 82) or waitlist control group (n = 105). Lethal force errors and objective measures of autonomic arousal and recovery were measured during reality-based scenarios pre- and post-training and at 12-month follow-up. In contrast to previous investigations of longer AM intervention protocols, no significant training-related improvements to behavioral or physiological outcomes were found immediately post-intervention or at follow-up. The current results suggest that single-day training is insufficient to learn the physiological awareness and regulation skills necessary to perform effectively during lethal force encounters, as demonstrated by a lack of immediate or sustained training effects. Practical considerations, such as resource allocation, that may undermine the effectiveness of implementing evidence-based police training are discussed.
Highlights
In response to numerous high-profile cases of police shootings and civilian deaths, there is mounting demand from both police and public stakeholders to identify effective occupational training programs that reduce lethal force errors (Iacobucci, 2014; Dubé, 2016; Huey, 2018; CCJ, 2021)
Resting heart rate (HR) and HR_Max did not differ significantly between groups at each time point at corrected levels of significance, analyses and HR values reported in Table 2 are averaged across groups
Despite calls for reform to police use of force (UOF) training and education practices (Iacobucci, 2014; Dubé, 2016; Huey, 2018; Bennell et al, 2021; CCJ, 2021) and growing need for effective occupational health interventions (Weiss, 2019; Anderson et al, 2020; Di Nota et al, 2021), the current findings demonstrate that utilizing abbreviated training to save costs is not effective for rewiring core physiological and cognitive processes aimed at modulating stress responses to reduce UOF errors
Summary
In response to numerous high-profile cases of police shootings and civilian deaths, there is mounting demand from both police and public stakeholders to identify effective occupational training programs that reduce lethal force errors (Iacobucci, 2014; Dubé, 2016; Huey, 2018; CCJ, 2021). In addition to psychoeducational modules that educate officers about stress physiology and adaptive regulation techniques (Arnetz et al, 2009, 2013), autonomic modulation (AM) using biofeedback during working hours or stressful critical incident scenarios have been effective in improving lethal force errors as well as measures of physical and mental health (McCraty et al, 2009; McCraty and Atkinson, 2012; Andersen et al, 2015, 2018; Andersen and Gustafsberg, 2016; Ramey et al, 2016) In spite of these evidence-based findings, police organizations require significant resources to both deliver and empirically evaluate the long-term effectiveness of AM interventions. By utilizing a pragmatic approach, the current study provides insights into the minimum training duration required to observe significant improvements (both immediate and sustained) in lethal force decision-making and AM, both of which greatly impact the health and safety of the public and police
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